#AmWriting

Greetings and well wishes from the hot and humid Northeast, where I've been thanking my lucky stars for air conditioning lately. I know I'm hardly alone in terms of dealing with sweaty summer weather; wherever you are as you read this, I hope you're safe and comfortable and doing something other than staring up at a ceiling fan, praying for fall and thinking homicidal thoughts about the sun.

Anyway, while I continue the often dispiriting quest for a new job, I've been writing like crazy. As far as I know, plans still call for my friends at Humorist Books to release Langley Powell and the Society for the Defense of the Mundane next week; in the meantime, I'm knuckling down on a trio of projects, all of which are lighting up my creative receptors in different ways. The first is non-fiction, and I'll be talking about it in more detail here before too terribly long — for now, suffice it to say that it'll consist of a collection of interviews with people from various walks of life, all of whom will be talking about major life experiences. The second is a book I've been working on with my pals Rob Smith and Mayor Matt Wardlaw for over ten years; it was set on a very deep back burner for a long time, but we're back at it again, and if I have anything to say about it, now we're finally dragging it over the finish line. This one is also non-fiction, and also contains a lot of interviews, but that isn't all it is. And it's music-related.

The third thing is a new novel, which I teased in a recent post and has been yelling at me to give it all my attention ever since. As I said before, I'm envisioning this as a sort of modern Chinatown with jokes, and that's definitely the way it's been shaping up thus far. I'm about 4,000 words in, and already dreading having to say goodbye to these characters. I feel like this is a very sellable book, so I absolutely intend to try climbing the "find a literary agent and publisher" mountain all over again once it's done, but in the meantime, I may also share some chapters here for paying subscribers.

On the music front, I have lately enjoyed the new albums from Griff and Johnny Blue Skies a.k.a. Sturgill Simpson, both of whom I covered in the most recent New Music Friday post. More recently, I've spent quite a lot of time with the Grant Green catalog, which is not only full of musical wonders, but also extremely fine listening if you're feeling a little raw after what feels like endless days of horrible news delivered at a fever pitch. Like any number of jazz artists, Green's catalog can be roughly divided into stuff purists approve of and stuff that made them cry "sellout"; unlike a number of those artists, I feel like you can hardly go wrong no matter which side you decide to listen to at any given moment. Eenie meenie minie moe, I'm going to share 1965's His Majesty King Funk, largely because it includes a ten-minute version of "Willow Weep for Me."

Watching: I finished the Paul Simon documentary, In Restless Dreams, which devotes a luxurious three and a half hours to his career and still doesn't hit on everything. Given that I finished it, it's probably no surprise that I felt like it was an extremely easy watch, dotted with moments of real emotion and genuine insight, but I would be lying by omission if I didn't add that the movie also — presumably inadvertently — does a stellar job of reinforcing the notion that Simon is a thin-skinned, self-absorbed asshole even in his old age. He's still objectively one of the most consistently interesting recording artists of the rock era, and also probably one of the finest American songwriters, although I'm qualifying that by acknowledging that he has probably ended up on the wrong side of the magpie/thief divider line a few times too many.

I also enjoyed Butterfly in the Sky, the Reading Rainbow documentary. This one contains very few surprises, which is a good thing — if you're going to watch a Reading Rainbow movie, you're going to expect to learn a lot about life behind the scenes of the show, and also be quite moved, and it delivers on both fronts. The show itself was a little after my time, and I don't think I've ever watched an episode, so this wasn't a case of nostalgia carrying the day, just a desire to watch good people trying to do good things. Maybe you could use more of that. I sure as shit could.

Finally, I'm working my way through Apple's David E. Kelley-shepherded TV adaptation of Presumed Innocent, the twisty murder mystery that was a hit film for Harrison Ford in 1990. I have vague memories of how this all turns out, but I'm still enjoying the series in a very streamy sort of way, which is to say I can recognize the talent brought to bear on the adaptation while still seeing the usual drawbacks — logy pace, dim fucking lighting, et cetera. Not a series that will change your life, and on balance I suspect the movie will end up going down as the superior adaptation, but it's gripping enough to keep a person going from episode to episode, so it does its job.

Reading: I have finished Fiasco, which I wrote about last week and is a terrific example of a book that's carried by the stories it contains despite some rather uninspired writing across the board. There's some legitimately fascinating stuff in here; it's just a shame it wasn't discussed in more compelling fashion. Now I'm on to Tourist Season, which will be my first Carl Hiaasen, much the same way Glitz was my first Elmore Leonard. 'Tis the summer of pulpy delights!

Elsewhere: I've got a new Critical Diagnosis column up at Diagnosis Daytime, and a new Record Player episode too. This time out, Matt and I are joined by our pal Jimmy Pardo from Never Not Funny, who returns to talk about the recently-turned-40 Chicago 17. Whether you're a longtime Chicago fan, or (like Matt and me) this was one of your first cassettes, or you just really like "You're the Inspiration," you can check it out here.